Tue - Nov 20 2018

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Alcoholism treatment is the formal treatment of someone who is addicted to alcohol. This treatment can consist of an in-patient stay at a treatment facility, outpatient treatment or a combination of the two. While groups like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) can help people who are addicted to alcohol and drugs, these are self-help groups and aren’t considered alcoholism treatment. They may be recommended as an adjunct to formal treatment if it seems they may be of help, especially during outpatient treatment and after a program ends.
Alcoholism treatment begins with alcohol detox. This is why many people don’t do well when they start an outpatient treatment in the beginning or simply choose to go for counseling to try to overcome alcoholism. Because they’re missing the formal detox program that can help them after they stop drinking, many find it difficult to completely abstain from alcohol.
When a person who has been using alcohol regularly stops drinking, they go through a withdrawal period, where they suffer from psychological and physical symptoms caused by the lack of alcohol in their systems. They’ll experience severe cravings for alcohol, which are mainly psychological, but physically they may suffer from aches, pains, nausea, vomiting and even more severe symptoms. Heavy users can have what’s commonly known as DTs, which is a severe tremor sometimes accompanied by hallucinations or confusion.
Someone who has used alcohol heavily for a long time, or an alcoholic who may not be in very good health, should really go through formal alcoholism treatment so that they can go through the detox period and the withdrawals in a formal, medical setting. Some symptoms can be severe and affect things like blood pressure and respiration, which could actually put some people at risk. Going through withdrawal as a patient in an alcoholism treatment facility lets the staff use medication and techniques like counseling to help ease symptoms and make it easier to get the alcohol out of your system.
Once the detox period is finished, the withdrawal symptoms end. The strong cravings for alcohol typically persist for a long time, however. This is where in-patient alcoholism treatment is useful. Though the detox period is the usually the most difficult and intense part of treatment, someone leaving a facility immediately after going through detox is still very vulnerable to alcohol. Without further treatment to help a person understand their addiction and how to fight it, it’s very easy to jump right back into hold habits and be around friends and family who may also be alcoholics. This makes success much less likely.
The most successful use of outpatient programs during alcoholism treatment comes after detox and after a period of time of one on one therapy and group counseling. The alcoholic needs to understand his addiction better, and to understand why he felt the need to drink in the first place, to be able to stay sober over the long haul. Alcoholism treatment works best when people stay for a while after detox, then continue with outpatient treatment as they adapt to their day to day lives again.

An alcohol rehab center is a facility designed to help people overcome their addiction to alcohol. Every alcohol rehab may not just focus on alcohol; some also have programs for drug addiction and other self-destructive behaviors. Some centers require in-patient treatment only during the detox period and then they allow patients to leave and continue with outpatient treatment.
Other centers keep patients after the detox period for a period of days or weeks to help them better understand their addictions. That type of alcohol rehab center will typically have an outpatient program that people who successfully complete the inpatient program can continue with for a while as they go back to their daily lives and face the challenge of having alcohol available to them at any time.
Sometimes an alcohol rehab center will give patients the option of leaving after the detox program or staying for further treatment. If you go through detox and can stay longer, you should. Alcoholics who continue inpatient treatment beyond the detox period have a much better chance of staying sober and avoiding relapse.
That’s because though detox does get you through the worst physical symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, it’s through continued therapy and group counseling that you can better get at the reasons you drink. The more you understand about the disease of alcoholism, the more knowledge you have to fight against it with. You can learn to recognize your triggers—things that send you into the compulsion to drink—and avoid them. At the very least, you’ll be able to recognize a trigger for what it is and be better able to resist giving in and having a drink.
An alcohol rehab center that offers outpatient treatment to those who leave can help you once you complete the inpatient portion. They may recommend that you go to meetings like those given by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) groups to help you when you’re feeling vulnerable and can’t get formal help from the center.
Many people attend these meetings to help them stay sober, because being surrounded by people who are going through the same thing and seeing others who have overcome what you’re going through can be a huge help. Some people go just when they feel a strong craving for alcohol, which may be only once in a while, while others go to every available meeting, even as often as once or twice a day.
It’s important to get the help you need, no matter how often you may need to go or how often you may need to contact a counselor at your alcohol rehab center. They’re there to help you, and will do everything they can to help you overcome the urge to drink.
If you’re trying to choose an alcohol rehab center, choose one that has a comprehensive outpatient program that you can take advantage of once you leave. While it’s easy to not drink while in the facility because there’s no alcohol available, once you leave the alcohol rehab center, the temptation to drink may be higher simply because it’s so easy to purchase alcohol.

Alcohol detox is the period of time you go through immediately after you stop drinking. It’s a necessary step, and probably the most difficult step, in overcoming alcoholism. While a person who is addicted to alcohol will always need to avoid alcohol and will always be an alcoholic, alcohol detox means the difference between being a using alcoholic and a recovering one.
Alcohol detox lets your body cast of the alcohol and its immediate effects, much like letting a poison dissipate from your system. For alcoholics, alcohol literally is poison that affects both your mind and your body. When you’re in the habit of drinking and you stop, your body and your mind will both react, sometimes violently.
The human body is very adaptable, but it’s also a thing of habit. When you give it alcohol on a regular basis, your system adjusts and gets used to the regular intake of alcohol. When that doesn’t happen, you will experience a variety of physical and mental effects known as withdrawal symptoms.
These symptoms during alcohol detox are both psychological, meaning that you’re mentally dependent on the alcohol, and physiological, meaning that your bodily systems have become dependent as well. Many people make the mistake of thinking that alcoholism is all “in your head,” and that a person could stop drinking if they simply decided to do so.
This is only partly correct. An alcoholic can choose to not purchase a drink and drink it, or not have alcohol in the house so that drinking is difficult and essentially go through alcohol detox on his own. No one forces an alcoholic to keep drinking but himself, or herself. So in that regard, an alcoholic does make the decision to drink.
But if a person who has never struggled with addiction could understand how difficult the compulsion to drink is to overcome, they may better understand why so many people continue to use even though they know it’s physically harming them and causing many problems in their lives.
Alcohol detox causes withdrawal symptoms that make it very difficult to stay strong and not drink, and for many the psychological symptoms can be just as harrowing as the physical ones. If a person has been addicted to alcohol for a long time, however, or they tend to use large amounts of alcohol at a time, the withdrawal symptoms can be almost impossible to deal with on their own. It may not even be healthy or safe to try to handle withdrawal on your own, depending on a number of factors.
If people are in poor overall health and/or of advanced age, it’s really crucial to go through alcohol detox in a medical setting with staff that are qualified to manage their symptoms. Withdrawal symptoms can be physically difficult and even have serious consequences. The age of the people going through withdrawal can also make a difference in the types of treatments used to ease symptoms. Whether in a treatment center or on your own, alcohol detox is the first, necessary step in freeing yourself from alcohol.

Addiction is one of the most difficult things a person can deal with. And addiction can strike anyone. Many people somehow think they’re immune to it. Of course, someone who’s not drinking or not using drugs has no risk of becoming addicted to either of those things. But many people who use drugs and drink but feel that they do so casually believe that they simply couldn’t become addicted.
This is the belief that most addicts have before they realize that they do have an addiction. If more people were aware that addiction isn’t simply something in the addict’s head but a real physical addiction that could happen to them, they might alter their behavior and avoid becoming addicted in the first place.
Addiction doesn’t just make people feel dependent on alcohol or drugs, either. People can become addicted to a variety of things, like gambling, pornography, thrill-seeking, spending money, and almost anything that makes people feel good for a short period of time.
Whether spending money can be an addiction with the same physical effects of alcoholism or drug addiction is debatable, but there is some evidence that the patterns that feel-good behavior causes in the brain makes it release substances that make us physically and mentally feel good. That could be where the actual addiction lies, in that rush you feel which is a true, physical sensation, and not just a state of mind.
Addiction, despite the openness with which people can talk about it today, is still highly misunderstood. Some people think that the drug addict or alcoholic chooses to keep using those substances. And there is an element of choice, because the person chooses to give in to the addiction and use or he chooses to fight the addiction and abstain from drinking or using drugs.
But many people who have never dealt with addiction personally or witnessed it in someone close to them don’t really how intense the physical side of addiction can be. When a person is addicted to alcohol or drugs, not using those substances doesn’t just keep them from those feel-good moments they experience while using. It causes a host of side-effects that make the person feel bad.
In some very severe addictions, a person’s life can actually be put at risk by the physical changes that occur once he stops using the substance. The period in which a person stops using is known as the detox period, and most people suffer mental and physical symptoms of withdrawal. This can range from feeling slightly ill to experiencing life threatening changes in brain chemicals, blood pressure, breathing and heart rhythms.
The severity of the withdrawal period usually depends on how long the person has been addicted and how much alcohol or drugs they typically use. A heavy drinker is going to have more severe withdrawals than someone who doesn’t drink nearly as much. Something else that’s misunderstood is what it takes to be an addict. You don’t have to use every day to have an addiction; it only has to negatively affect your life.